Absenteeism is probably one of the most complained about issues in business when it comes to gripes employers have about employees. Now this is a two way road, one on which if a business owner does not have clear defined standards and policies the employee is going to take full advantage of additional free days off. So even if management has determined that if an employee is well enough to go to the doctor or hospitals then they are fit enough to show up for work this type of approach probably won’t work.
What actually is absenteeism? Its is an employee’s intentional or habitual absence from work and while employers expect workers to miss a certain number of workdays each year, excessive absences can equate to decreased productivity and can have a major effect on company finances, morale and other factors.
I’ve heard that public sector absenteeism is a ‘sick joke’ but when one considerers the loss of revenue that employees ‘breaking days’ cause in small and medium businesses it becomes tantamount to a prostrate test.
People miss work for a number of reasons some legitimate and others less, a common cause is that he employee needs to go to the clinic and the clinic note later produced & not scrutinised by the business owner refers to family planning, which in itself is a valid reason but on company time for this reason begs the question of whether the reason is a company benefit.
There are traditional methods of curbing absenteeism which definitely have their place and then there are innovative methods that look beyond the failure to come to work and consider the reasons and loss of productivity of the staff members. Recently I assisting a client with a 27% absenteeism rate, we were able to leverage a potential increase in production in real rand value to R110,000- and this involving 13 staff members.
Although a principle of ‘no work no pay’ applies with unauthorised or unapproved absence, it’s no joking matter and one that is prevalent from our esteemed parliament through to the grossly unfair inconvenience when the trusty domestic employee fails to appear at work to clean up your mess.
Article compiled by Gordon Belton
Gordon Belton is a labour Relations and Human Resources Consultant, who’s Business, Rivers Consultancy specialises in payroll matters. He may be contacted at gordon@riversconsultancy.co.ca or, 0836351587